Appendicitis

Not much happened this week. We spent most of it in the trailer resting. So instead of having 7 straight days of "we sat at home and studied," I'll just his the highlights.

Appendicitis- Last Sunday morning, I woke up and my stomach was hurting a little bit. I thought it was just hunger pains due to the fact that it was our fast Sunday. I went to church and was doing fine. I even played the piano during Sacrament Meeting. During 2nd hour, I started getting really uncomfortable. I was trying to shift positions constantly, but nothing was comfortable. We went to call the mission nurse, but she was about to teach a Relief Society lesson. After Priesthood opening exercises, I got a blessing from Brother Packer. I survived through the end of church, but as soon as it was over, we drove home, and I curled up in a ball on my bed and called Sister Steadman. She told me to go to the urgent care in Elizabeth City. We would have to wait a hour and a half to be seen. During that time, the pain started going away. The doctor came in and started pushing around on my stomach. When he got to my appendix, I flinched in pain and he said, "Crap." He was a funny doctor. They took a blood sample and came back and said "You have appendicitis." They sent me to the ER after that.

      We checked in and some nurses took me into a little room and did some initial tests. One of them started feeling around my stomach and asked me, "Are you holding you breath?" I said "No." She said, "You have some really nice abs." Ha ha score. Sister Steadman met us at the hospital. They took me back into a room. I got to call my family. They gave me some pain killers in an IV. The surgeon came in and explained to me what was going to happen. They did the surgery lyposcopically. They made a could a small incisions and put a camera through my belly button to get it out. After he left, we waited for the OR team to get set up. They took me to the OR prep room and I was there for about an hour waiting for the anesthesiologist. I went into the operating room at 10:05. The next thing I remember was being waken up and wheeled into my hospital room. Apparently, I called my parents again, but I was so out of it. The nurse asked some questions and then I finally got to go to sleep. The nurse, who was extremely pretty by the way, woke me up every couple of hours to take my vitals, or give me more pain medicine.

     I spent most of the day in the hospital recovering. I was discharged at about 6:30. Hospital food is not desirable. They gave me Percocet for the pain.

Zone Conference- We went to Zone Conference on Wednesday. We had two different sessions, a morning and an afternoon. I made it most of the way through the morning session, before I went to the Mother's Room to rest. I made it through all of the afternoon session, but just barely. We talked a lot about using the Book of Mormon more effectively.

Exchanges- We did two exchanges this week, one with Elizabeth City A (Zone Leaders) and Elizabeth City B so Elder Davis could go out and do some work.

Big Changes- We had a pretty big shake-up in the branch yesterday. The Branch Presidency was reorganized. President Evers is still the president, with Brother Packer and Brother Johnson as counselors. Brother Hamilton is the new Elder's Quorum President, and Jacob Packer is the new Branch Mission Leader.

Elder Dumont